AOSP Posts on XDA

Over the years, the lock screen has evolved with the changing design language of Google's Android. Starting with Android 5.0 Lollipop, the lock screen developed a Material Design flavor and implemented rich notification support. But apart from Motorola, OnePlus, and a couple of other outliers, most OEMs have opted to use their own lock screen...

Sony is one of the few OEMs that remains a firm believer in AOSP. Most companies do not bother providing necessary firmware binaries to allow developers to port AOSP onto the device. But while some OEMs actually do provide binaries for developers to make AOSP builds, like we saw with the OnePlus 3, Sony takes...

Update 5:00PM CST: It has been brought to our attention that there is more evidence regarding HTC's involvement in the software development of the Pixel devices, see the addendum at the end of the article.
The "Made by Google" motto represents a dramatic shift in Google's attitude towards Android. Rather than cycle through its various OEM...

If, for some reason, you were still of the opinion that an OEM could never be developer friendly, Sony has given yet another example of being just that.
On its official website for all developer resources, Sony has posted a build guide for building Android 7.0 Nougat, the AOSP flavor and not its skinned variant, for its...

Let us start off by saying that the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are remarkable devices by themselves as far as hardware goes. They are among the best Android phones that one can purchase in all major markets of the world. The devices provide a decent user experience for a normal consumer, and the sales...

A few months ago I kicked off a series of articles aimed at examining what affects build times when building an Android ROM from open source options such as CyanogenMod or OMNIRom.
You showed us you were very interested and then did something else -- started to ask questions. Does Intel or AMD make a difference?...

Paranoid Android returned in what was probably one of the most exciting moments of the week for XDA users, even amidst new and significant phone releases. After a long hiatus, their newest Marshmallow builds are available to the public.
For those who don’t know about Paranoid Android, they had made some excellent ROMs crammed with functionality that...

At this year's Code Conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke with Walt Mossberg about a few topics, including the company's own Nexus Phones. During the conference, Sundar mentioned that Google will be ‘more opinionated’ with how they look at Nexus Phones.
Some news outlets have taken this as meaning that Google will no longer be shipping...

Update 4/19 12 pm CT: Clarified build times are ccache build times.
Update 4/20 9:17 am CT: Build 3 was most certainly not RAID 1. Corrected that error.
In 2012 I started to build kernels -- and relied on my trusty Core 2 Quad Q9550 to build it. If that wasn't worthy of a cringe then the fact...

OEM’s provide a service. Your device is a way to access that service, and whether you agree with the conclusion or not, you can see why they might want to limit your access to modify that service. However, there is a difference between modifying, tweaking and tinkering with your device to match your exact personal...

When you get a custom kernel to flash onto your device, in most cases you don't think about its development process. Developers often use some really complicated tools to make the device boot.
Among them you can find Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitters (UARTs) used mostly for debugging.
One of our favorite OEMs decided to show us how everything...

Recovery is a vital part of the Android ecosystem, yet Sony smartphones are distributed without traditional /recovery partition. This is not convenient solution both for users and developers. To include some custom recovery like TWRP, PhilZ or ClockworkMod, ramdisk hacks are required.
Despite this somehow weird strategy, we can't say a bad word about Sony as they...

HTC 10 (Unlocked)

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (Verizon) [SM-G935V]

Nexus 5 (Unlocked)

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